More nausea and a little bit of hope.

Following on from My miscarriage…

The Husband and I made the decision to foget about ovulation tests and ‘windows of opportunity’.  Perhaps we just didn’t have the capacity for more disappointment.  So when I didn’t get a period a month after the miscarriage we were very surprised!

You can understand why we were wary, feeling a little fragile and anxious.  I was relieved to experience nausea pretty much from the onset of the pregnancy – something that was absent from the last pregnancy that wasn’t meant to be.  We met Janet Grundy, possibly the best midwife in the history of the world.  She understood our fears and made us feel like we had a right to feel that way.  She organised an early scan so met got to see the baby for the first time when she was I was only eight weeks pregnant.

Morning sickness sucks.  I mean, it just doesn’t let up.  But I now had a new respect for it, not taking for granted those pregnancy harmones flying around my body, keeping the baby safe.

The main difference in this pregnancy was the little toddler running around at home.

Over Christmas we had a massive family get together in a gorgeous hotel – and I although I got to be there, I missed out big style.  I was sick through the day and exausted before Chloe was even in bed.  But hey, those experiences make you really appreciate opportunities that don’t come round that often.

Once the nausea passed at around 4 months the prenancy was pretty normal.  If I’m honest I don’t remember that much of it, don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing!  At the 20 week scan we really wanted to know if we were having a boy or a girl.  We asked.  The sonographer looked.  And looked.  Pulled a reluctant face and told us she wasn’t 100% sure so she didn’t want to say.  She then said she was 60% sure it was a girl.  What on earth does that mean?! 60%?! I was gutted.  There was a leaning towards another girl but really we couldn’t be sure.  After a tearful tantrum I calmed down and accepted the unknown.  Though people didn’t believe us when we said we didn’t know if we having a boy or a girl!

I was due on the 14th August.  A couple of days before, mid evening, I started having contractions; painful enough to put on the tens machine and regular enough to take it seriously!  we called family and, because chloe’s birth was soooooo long and drawn out we settled down and tried to get some rest.  Well, we woke up the next morning so guessed things had things had slowed right down through the night!

We got on with everyday life, approached and seemingly passed b y my due date.  I didn’t hold much expectation of the baby being born on its’ due date with Chloe going over four days over.  We settled down to bed around 10.30pm but ten minutes later a strong contraction stuck and lasted what seemed like forever.  When the next one came around I accidently clung onto The husband, waking him up. Once I had my tens machine on I truly did try to rest but they were just coming thick and strong.  It didn’t feel like this labour would go the same way as it did first time round.

Looking back I was so much more confident.  I focused through each contraction, trying so hard relax my body.  It didn’t look like things would slow down again so we made phone calls to parents in the north east,the parents around the corner and my brother and sister-in-law (My sister in Laws’ birthday was the 15th – the following day so she was excited to be potentially sharing it with her niece/nephew). My mum downed like five cups of coffee and set off down the A1 to hopefully get to us before baby arrived.  Arrangements had been made for The Husband’s parents to come and sleep here if things started through the night, so they’d be here to look after Chloe.  After a couple of hours I called the Maternity Ward and when I dropped the phone through a contraction they told me to come in as quick as I could.  Charles and Mary came over and went straight upstairs while I was cuddling my gym ball in the living room…

To be continued.

Loss.

Continuing from here…

The days turned into weeks and I became so aware of myself.  I saw my body as this baby’s cocoon and wanted to protect it as much as I could.  I couldn’t wait till the 12 weeks scan to see that little heart beat fluttering away and feel the relief that the baby was well.

So when, after about three weeks of excitement, I woke up on the 31st October and saw that I’d started bleeding, my world turned upside down.  We were rushing out to the dentist and I was meeting The Husband there.  I just had to just get on with it, with my 18 month old Chloe in tow.  It felt surreal; like it was happening to someone else.  It had to be happening to someone else. Please, just not me.

We went to see the GP and I was told I had to wait a week until I could be scanned.  So I just waited.  And bled.  And said goodbye to the baby I’d never meet.  There was nothing I could do to stop it.  Its awful to be told that you have lost a baby – but the pain I experienced in knowing that I was losing my baby – standing on the sidelines, watching it happen – was crippling.

The day of the scan came and I although I’d been told that it really looked as though I’d miscarried, I held on to the hope that things might just be ok.  These things did happen sometimes.  Bleeding can happen and it be ok.  I just wanted it to be ok.

They did an internal scan and the room was silent.  The lady finished and just looked at me.  She asked me to look at the screen and tell me what I though I could see.

“Nothing”.

There was nothing left there.  They took some blood to confirm a miscarriage and I was to call back that evening.

I needed to get away.   To just not be here.  My mum drove to get me and Chlloe and took us back to theirs for a few days.  I called the hospital and they said I still had levels of pregnancy harmones to confirm a miscarriage.  I asked what now and she asked what I meant.  What did she mean, what did I mean?? I meant, what now?? She didn’t say anything – just to let my cycle settle before starting all over again.

Miscarriage is common. NHS claim its one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage – 3/4 of those in the first twelve weeks.  That means nothing to you at the time.  when its’ you that’s grieving.  For you, you’re the only person to feel this raw pain of loss.  It selfish, I know.  But its’ true.

Time helps.  At some point you feel like you can really breathe again.  Women deal with it in different ways.  And that’s ok.  Its got to be ok, because no-one can tell you what or how to feel.  You just need to navigate it the best you can and in a way that works for you.  Me me, altough my baby was so tiny at 8 weeks, it was still may baby.  Nothing will undo that.  So for me it helped to acknowledge that, so that I could say goodbye.

Shooting forward in time – a little while ago Chloe asked something about babies in tummies or something – I don’t remember.  But I was able to explain that she had a baby brother or sister in heaven.  And even years on, that helped me.  It helped me to make sense of the pain and the loss and the confusion.

It never fully goes away. And that’s ok.  It’s ok that it becomes part of who you are.  There is so much support out there for those suffering from a miscarriage – for the whole family.  Below are a couple of really helpful sites:

http://www.tommys.org/miscarriage?gclid=CMHix7jF7LICFaTKtAodrXkA-w

http://www.nct.org.uk/pregnancy/miscarriage-support

If you’re in the thick of this, grab all the support you can.  That doesnt mean you have to talk when you dont’ want to talk.  It just means you can lean on those who love you.  Don’t shut them out because they can walk through this with you and it makes it a lot less lonely.

Get Set….

Before I became pregnant with Chloe I had no real point of reference.  We have a pretty small family and The Husbands’ is even smaller.  All I’d seen were the glowing images you’d see on TV ads and in magazines.  Boy was I in for a shocker…

By the time I was five weeks pregnant I was ill.  I don’t remember it starting but it must have been quick.  It’s funny that your body and your brain forgets whats it’s like and I have to think hard to remember.  I couldn’t move and I certainly couldn’t eat.  Thankfully I held down enough fluid to be just hydrated enough, although I was constantly lectured by my GP that I’d have to go into hospital if I stopped keeping down fluids.  Thinking hard to remember, ice lollies really helped.  And Wham bars.  Oh those dear wonderful Wham bars.  And in those early days thats pretty much it.

When I was around twelve weeks pregnant I was bridesmaid at My brothers’ wedding.  A couple of weeks before the wedding I right in the thick of the nausea.  We travelled up to the North East to be part of the hen and stag parties, vomiting in a bowl and over the side of the car the whole way.  The Husband was awesome, and didn’t bat an eyelid of dealing with the grim side of a nauseous pregnant wife.  I was bed-bound at my parents and on the afternoon of the hen party mum drove us over to Newcastle and I had my head in the bowl the whole way.  I didn’t last very long.  I couldn’t stay away from the bathroom and I couln’t really even sit up properly.  Ah, well at least I tried.  By the time the wedding rolled around I was feeling a little better. I wished I could have been able to enjoy the day a bit more, most of the time I was concentrating of controlling the qeasy feelings.  After the ceremony those dreaded pangs started rising up.  There was a wall surrounding the country church and a pub next door to it.  As soon as was remotely appropriately I hopped over the wall and ran into the pub in search of the toilet.  God bless that Pub.

You know when you see really great ideas and wish you’d thought of them or at least spotted them from someone else and nicked it?  Pinterest plagues me like that.  It’s not quite an original idea because it’s been done so many times now but I love that women have taken a similar picture each month with details included onto the image.  When they’re all together they look awesome.

I was tiny.  Even through i’d want to kick anyone who pointed it out, I knew they were right.  I don’t know what it is about your bump but it’s definitely part of your identity as a mum-to-be.  Being told that there wasn’t much of an bump translates to a pregnant woman that they’re not that much of a mum-to-be.  Seriously.  Don’t underestimate those harmones.  To that woman it makes complete sesnse.  Having a small bump though did not stop that little piece of dynamite moving around.  Because the bump was all baby you could see full limbs as she moved around.  Most of the time my tummy would be pointy.

Whe I was five months pregnant we werev visiting my parents up in the north East for christmas.  We spent boxing day with family and I was designated driver.  I drove everyone back in the evening and something happened when I turned to get out of the car.  Searing pain bruned through my back.  I was in so much distress that at first my dad thought I’d gone into early labour. I was on all fours because I couldn’t lie down and I couldn’t sit up.  I never found out what happened to my back.  Doctors presumed it was a trapped nerve.  I couldn’t take anything other than paracetamol.

We had plans to visit my in-laws over the christmas holidays to so we made our way down to the midlands.  I worked out that heat really helped so I contantly had heat packs on my back.  Over that week we also decided to move house.  You know, we didn’t have anything else going on or anything…! I loved that first house we owned.  We’d rented before so we couln’t call it our first home but it was very very dear to us.  It was old and had heaps of quirky character.  We worked out that we could push our mortgage up a bit so why not move into a house with a 3rd bedroom.  It all happened pretty quick – and we visited a mortgage near to the Husbands’ parents that week.

The house was only on the market a couple of weeks.  I remember the couple that bought it in the ende wanted to come and have a 2nd look around but we had to cancel because I couln’t move off the bed because my back hurt so much.  We’d moved the microwave into our bedroom so we could keep warming the wheat bags through the night.  One afternoon I was in the bathroom of a supermerket and I caught sight (I really don’t know how!) of a mark on my back.  Being six months pregnant I popped into the pharmacy within the supermarket to ask the pharmacist what it was.  He told me it looked like shingles.  You do not want shingles when you’re pregnant.  I got an appointment with an emergency doctor who had a look at told me it was a blister.  From a burn.  Had I put something really hot on my back? Erm…Only my wheat bags. the doctor told me the wheat bag must have been insanely hot to make this kind of burn.  I hadn’t noticed.  The heat just took away the pain from the trapped nerve.  From then on The Husband was in charge of heating that wheat bags…

We locked the door on the old house whn I was 8 months pregnant.

Yep.  That’s my eight month bump. But hey – that eight month bump cracked a pane of glass on the top of a set of drawers when I sat on it.  So I just sat on the floor out of the way…

I was due on the 1st of May and I remember going out for lunch with my mum and the look on the waitresses face was priceless when I said I was due that day.  As if my water would break that very moment and flood the whole pub.

But my waters didnt break that day.  Chloe kept us waiting for five days…

On your marks…

When I was thinking about how to launch this blog into outer-cyber-space, I guessed it would be with my birth stories.  But then I realised that it all began way before then.

If I’m completely honest I hadn’t thought much about having children when I was younger.  I was married just a couple of weeks after my 21st birthday.   People told us we were insane to get married so young, but this didn’t bother us one bit.Not long into our marriage there was a wee ‘scare’ and we fell into manic mode.  Surely we were too young to be parents!? I didn’t turn out to be pregnant and its interesting to look back and know that, for us, deciding to have kids was not just a passive, automatic thing.

There was a distinct switch from the idea of being pregnant making me panic, to thinking it would be really quite wonderful.  I figured it was nothing to do with age, you just know when you were ready. Suddenly I saw Pushchairs everywhere.  Where did they all come from because they weren’t there before…?

We had group of close friends around us that had been married a little longer than The Husband and I.  Maybe they were part of the switch, bringing the idea to the forefronts of our minds.  I remember,we’d been married for one year, and we were sitting on the beach, talking seriously about having a baby.  We were excited and petrified in equal measures.

If I do something I like to do it properly.  Nothing’s done by half in our home.  So when I say we prepared ourselves, I mean we really prepared ourselves. We walked from the beach over to WHSmiths and boought Zita West’s Fertility and Conception book.  I didn’t realise how much we didn’t know until we opened that book…!  Between our new baby-making encyclopedia and the whole load of resources available online, together we decided what was useful for us and what seemed non-sensical.  We knew we lead a pretty healthy lifestyle and so didnt see the need to suddenly become gym bunnies or stock up with oily fish (oily fish is so healthy, but neither of us like it!).  The Husband did decide to cut out on caffeine because we read that it caused sperm to become genetically mutated.  We didn’t really like the thought of that and thought it wasn’t worth the risk (!) – so he went through the headaches of caffeine-withdrawal to do all he could to make nicely shaped sperm 🙂

 

We read that it can be very ‘normal’ to take up to a year to conceive.  So we were really surprised when, three weeks later, the first pregnancy test we ever took, sitting on our bathroom floor, showed two pink lines…